National Association of Air Traffic Specialists

Aviation Safety is Our Business

Bulletin #9

From

Don McLennan

NAATS asked what would "extra" levels within a pay band system look like? Most likely there would be extra "ghost" like parallel bands added on to each specific facility level. Why have supplemental levels within a pay band? It can save money for other uses, allows seasoning, and means people need to stay within the bargaining unit for a longer period of time before getting as much money as possible and moving on, and, allows for the requirement to develop some extra skills. A concern for NAATS is we need to be careful in how long we hold someone at a certain level for fear they may decide to go someplace else (most likely cross option) if we hold them too long at one level. We would like to try and develop this further and will work on this topic over the next several meetings. I will keep you posted with our progress.

The next issue we attacked is what happens from the time you enter on duty at the Academy to finally attaining the highest level of FPL status. Right now all we want is some basic structure of where and how you move through the system. This mostly consists of defining the criteria/requirements to move through different/multiple job levels. As a business decision, the FAA does not want to run anyone through two developmental training programs; this is very time consuming and costly.

NAATS’ presented their desire to establish a policy on annual increases. We have had extensive briefings on both the ARA and NATCA methods of doing this. It is imperative that even though we are developing a specialized pay system for Controllers we must still, in some way, connect to the FAA Core Compensation System. This is the FAA wide pay system that will replace the General Schedule. Primarily, we are interested in connecting within the Core system components of the Organizational Success Indicator (OSI) and the Superior Contribution Increase (SCI). There is a "Payroll Rise" of 1.6% caused by your annual WGI increase. Over the eighteen years of getting from a step 1 to 10 that is the average annual increase. In the core system Within Grade increases are abolished and a pool of money is created instead, using the WIG money to fund the OSI and the SCI components. The OSI is paid annually to everyone and the SCI is also but only to the organization’s top 15% best performers. NAATS suggested adopting a formula for our OSI/SCI: the bargaining unit will receive the GI plus 1.2%. In the event that the pool is even greater than the GI + 1.2%, NAATS will split any money above that amount along with the other .4% SCI pool by a 50/50 split between the SCI and the OSI.

Back to Bulletin List.

Walter W. Pike, President

This page was last updated on 26 June, 2000